While I believe that statistics and scouting should not live without one another, one thing is for sure: it all begins at the scouting level.
This first article examines the Blue Jays involvement at the amateur level, their scouting in Canada and the state of the Game north of the 49th parallel.
It is often said that baseball is America’s pastime, but in Hockey Country, a quarter of a million amateurs run the bases every summer and carry on the rich tradition. People seem to forget that since the 1880s, talk of major league baseball in Toronto had already begun by influential people such as A.G. Spalding.
1969 was the year that the major leagues made their first foray into Canada, Montreal being the beneficiary. Eight years later, it was time for Toronto to compete in the American League after a long and arduous process to obtain a franchise. The effect at the amateur level of a major league baseball franchise (and any other pro sport) in a region is considerable. Young athletes look up to the baseball stars and relate to their teams’ highs and lows.
That being said, hockey is king in Canada (with over 545,000 amateurs playing the sport in 2006-07), but a strong argument could be made that if the devastating baseball strike in 1994 had not happened, the 1992 and 1993 World Series Championships by the Blue Jays would have elevated the sport to a record level at the amateur level. The negative coverage of the Montreal franchise in the last five years before they moved in 2005 even had a more profound impact on the state of the game in the country than their departure.
“A professional team has a strong influence on a community, but when you talk about the Expos, the last five or six years were so disappointing on and off the field that it had a negative impact at the amateur level and it was time to put an end to this saga,” said Andr? Lachance, manager of baseball operations at Baseball Canada and also the manager for the women’s national team.
The future is rosy, however, and the Blue Jays now have a responsibility, being the only MLB team in the country, to teach and expand the game by working side-by-side with the provincial associations. According to some people, even when the Expos still called Montreal home, the Blue Jays were always more involved at the grassroots level.
“Nationally, the Blue Jays were always more pro-active when it came time to help us with visibility and participation in our programs,” said Lachance. “The Expos were mainly partnered with Baseball Quebec. The Blue Jays have always been helpful by supporting our national teams and even inviting us at their training facilities in Dunedin, Fla, where they played our junior teams against some of their affiliates. Today, they are even more involved with us and seem to be making inroads in the Province of Quebec.”
In the last eight years, the Toronto club has multiplied the efforts to put baseball on the map in Canada. Kevin Briand, Blue Jays Director of Canadian Scouting, has been an important actor in this process.
“Our most popular program is the baseball clinics. We work closely with provincial association and when asked by these groups, we send coaches on site for a four-hour visit to teach baseball fundamentals to young kids. Depending on the association, about half of the money gathered at these events is then given at the amateur level to buy bats, ball and other equipment.”
Baseball Canada coaches are also invited to the Blue Jays instructional league, an event that takes place in Dunedin after each season has concluded and where some prospects are helped with certain aspects of their game the club thinks could be improved to make them more complete players. For Canadian coaches to pick major and minor league coaches is a great opportunity to amass quality information that they can teach to kids the following season in the north.
Under the presidency of Paul Godfrey, the Blue Jays also make direct money commitments, like the $20,000 they donate each January to the Baseball Canada fundraiser.
For the Jays, all this attention to the development of the sport in the country represents additional expenses that American teams don’t have to worry about. Is it worth it?
“Definitely,” Briand said. “It is very important for us that the game of baseball stays strong in Canada, particularly in the Province of Ontario. The more people enjoy the game, the more chance we have of having them visit us at the Rogers Centre and follow the Blue Jays on TV and radio. This creates a strong brand and bond between the fans and us.”
Toronto currently has ten Canadian players in its organization.
Scouting in Canada
When it comes to scouting the Canadian talent, not every team has a Director of Canadian Scouting, scouts in different regions of the country or even a strong interest in our participation. Toronto has four part-time scouts in the country, a baseball camp coordinator and ambassador for amateur baseball.
Kevin Briand estimates that half of the teams have at least one permanent scout for Canada, but the remaining clubs have one scout that oversees the whole country plus three US states, generally Michigan, Ohio and New York. Many teams rely on reports given by the MLB Scouting Bureau, whose Canadian Director, Walt Burrows, is a Brentwood Bay, B.C. native.
In addition to visiting diamonds across Canada in search of a the next wave of talent, the Blue Jays still rely on tryouts around the country, but mainly in Ontario. These events give a chance to any players to perform in front of professional scouts. While athletes in Canada have to be drafted and not signed directly by teams (since 1991), the tryouts become an audition for players and give the Blue Jays a first look to certain players they’ll want to follow in the future for a possible pick in the draft.
“The problem with tryouts is that most players who participate in the events are one or two years removed from draft eligibility, but what is great about them is that it gives us some interesting names to follow as well as their strengths and weaknesses,” Briand told InsideTheDome. “It is fun to do and also a good opportunity for us to speak directly to parents and athletes, open a line of communication that could help in the future.”
Our country may be producing more and more impact players, but the scouting experience is not getting any better. The climate and long hours traveling bring some challenges to the talent-finders.
“It is important for us, especially when we deal with High School players, to see them as often as possible,” Kevin Briand explained. “With the draft at the beginning of June, we really have to see players the year before, because the long winters mean that we can only scout them in April and May. We need to feel comfortable and make a good evaluation of the athletes before we invest time and money in their development. We have to be ready and take into account the limitations that a place like Canada offers.”
Other factors may have to be considered when evaluating northern players.
A player’s makeup is too often overlooked when his overall performances are analyzed, but a true Canadian identity seems to have been observed by our neighbors in the south in some of our exported talent. It is called the ‘hockey mentality’. It is meant to be a compliment to a player that will run through a wall or run hard on every grounder.
The following quote from Dick Groch, the Milwaukee Brewers’ Director of Pro Scouting, in Bob Elliott’s ‘Northern Game’ explains it all perfectly:
“When you go watch a young man play hockey in Canada you can see his physical and mental toughness. In the United States we can see this toughness on the football field or the basketball court. When you go to Canada you find corner players, infielders and outfielders, plenty of left-handed hitters, raw-boned pitchers, both left and right. Scouts should not expect to find a runner or a finesse position player. Canadians were always known for their rough style of play. Tough kids play in tough weather.”
The State of Baseball in Canada
After some down years in baseball registrations across the country, the last two years have shown increases in many regions, especially in Ontario and British Columbia (close to 45,000 amateur players in that province alone). This renewed enthusiasm might be the result of strong performances at the major league level, where ?ric Gagn? won the Cy Young Award in 2003, Justin Morneau won the MVP honors in 2006, Russell Martin won the Silver Slugger Award as well as the Gold Glove as a catcher in 2007 and Jeff Francis led his Colorado Rockies to the World Series in October. Maybe more importantly, the win over the United States in the first edition of the World Baseball Classic in 2006 certainly helped build a strong bond between the sport and Canadians.
Our representation at the pro level has never been stronger, with 804 playing College baseball, over 170 in affiliated baseball and 24 major leaguers.
“It’s contradictory when you look at it: we have had weaker enrollment figures for a while, but our elite teams have performed very well. That may be due to our changing focus here at baseball Canada,” Andre Lachance explained.
That change of direction will be very beneficial at the amateur level. Originally, the Baseball Canada mandate was to train and manage the Team Canada roster for international competition and organize the Canadian Championships. Now, the organization will be more involved in the development of programs to help young athletes become better baseball player at all levels.
One initiative that is very popular since its inception in 2006 is the ‘Rally Cap Program’, designed to introduce better tools for players and coaches in order to enhance their first experience with the game of baseball. The program is based on the martial art levels where you have a color for each level you reach. The first year they produced 10,000 caps, but they had to make 30,000 available the following year, because the experiment was so successful. Kids are now proudly walking around showing off the new levels they reached in their baseball education.
Other experiments are also taking place to enhance the first years of competition.
“Baseball is a very conservative world and we are trying to change the dynamics of the game to make it more attractive to young participants. For example, some teams play six on six, instead of the usual nine players. The ball rarely goes into the outfield, so that makes for a more entertaining environment,” Lachance began. “We had the objective of making first-year participants come back the next year, because from the feedback we received, the first impressions were negative and second year inscriptions dropped off dramatically. Those initiatives gave us the chance to make it fun for the kids and introduce them to another side of the game.”
The latest innovation for Baseball Canada, introduced at its convention that took place a few weeks ago in Edmonton, Alta, is the use of the pitch count instead of innings pitched to control the development of young pitchers. But that’s not the only change that will occur on the diamonds in the near future.
“Serious analysis of research has led us to this change and other adjustments; when you are taken out of a game as a pitcher, you won’t substitute as a catcher, that makes no sense. There is also the use of the curve ball that will have to be restrained, since research shows that it is damaging the young arms rapidly.”
Always looking to acquire knowledge on the scientific analysis that’s available, Andr? Lachance was able to visit international destinations that have a serious lead when it comes to managing kids and their baseball development.
“I have the chance to go to Cuba often. In a way, they are my mentors over there. When you get there and see how they treat their young athletes, you see that they have been introducing these changes for years now. They had access to unbelievable technology when they were under soviet control and important financial resources were devoted to sports research. They are way more advanced in that department than we may believe. In fact, our latest booklet on Long Term Athlete Development (LTAD) is greatly inspired by their way of doing things.”
There are many aspects of scouting and baseball in Canada that needs to be told and analyzed. This is only the beginning of that long journey and we invite you to come back on InsideTheDome for future reports and interviews.
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